By this point, you’ve got the “big idea” stuff about your ficton figured out. You know the basics of the setting, have some ideas for plot points, know who the characters are, and have some stock adventure ideas to get thing moving. If you’re halfway good at improvisation, you can probably run a session of the game now. Still, there are a handful of other things that it’s best to put together before the game starts.

Recurring Characters

Unless the game premise involves the party drifting into a new town each week like an 80s TV hero, there are probably some NPCs who will show up in the game again and again. For Guardians of Aetheria, there will be other Guardians (especially a “boss” type Guardian who sends the PCs on missions), recurring villains (like Dober-Man, Leapin’ Lizard, and Maskadon), and probably some assorted shopkeepers, minions, and innocent bystanders who the PCs run into in and around their home base. Some of the PCs may also have recurring NPCs built into their characters (like the other knights in Sir Uriel’s Order). If you’ve got any standard NPC types who will show up regularly (like Demonlings or other assorted footsoldiers), you should include them in your list of recurring characters.For a game like Guardians of Aetheria, you might also want to come up with a bunch of characters with Toy Gimmicks and relevant dumb names who can be slotted into any role where you need an action figure-worthy character.

When you’re developing your recurring characters, don’t go overboard. You don’t need complete stats for every character in the world. Characters who exist mostly to give the PCs orders, take orders from the PCs, sell stuff, or provide useful information or exposition just need a name, Role, and personality. Characters who play a bigger role in the story may need a bit more depth, but it’s often best to let the finer points crop up naturally during play. Save full-blown stat write-ups for those who will be fighting the PCs or joining them on adventures.

Recurring Locations

You should also come up with some basic information about the places that will show up regularly, especially the town or neighborhood where the PCs are based, with more details for the specific places where the PCs spend a lot of their time: the Guardians headquarters, the characters’ favorite bar, that kind of thing. If maps help you, draw them. If a general feel for the place is more useful, come up with some telling details and colorful characters that will help you bring the place to life. Again, don’t go overboard. You don’t need to know what every building in town is, just the ones that you know or strongly suspect the PCs will visit. Leave some things undefined so you can add new stuff as needed. Coming ups with a couple of odd or interesting landmarks, locations, fun facts, or local traditions that suggest a story but are unlikely to become plot points (maybe the plaza near the weaponsmith’s shop features a fountain covered in shark reliefs and statues or people think it’s bad luck to play darts on Thursdays) often make the place seem more real.

Recurring Stuff

You probably already figured out how the PCs’ stuff works when you created characters, but most game worlds feature technology, equipment, magical items, drugs, creatures, and other stuff that’s likely to appear frequently even if the PCs don’t carry it around with them. Like with characters and places, don’t worry about being comprehensive. Just work out the details for the stuff the characters are likely to encounter early in the game or on a regular basis. For Guardians, this would include Light Blades, ray guns, and other common technology or magical items (healing potions, for example).

The First Adventure

The first adventure needs to hook the players, so you should give it some thought. The first session needs to establish the setting, introduce important recurring characters and concepts, and give the players a chance to settle into their characters and the group dynamic. It’s best to keep the adventure very simple and straightforward so it can serve as a backdrop to all the introductions. Use a stock plot, but flesh it out well enough that you can run it without getting stumped or having to stop to figure things out. Try to stick to situations where the game mechanics required are simple and straightforward, especially if the players are new to the game system; the first session should be about learning the basics, like how to make ability rolls or how combat works. Make sure the adventure is exciting with lots of cool set pieces and enemies, but leave some room for breaks in the action where the players can learn about the characters and poke around the sandbox. Don’t try anything fancy in the first session. They’ll be plenty of time for that later.

Lists and Tables

Finally, you’ll want to come up with some things to make your job easier during actual play. The need for some of these, like tables of wild magic effects or random monsters, will be obvious because of character choices or ficton rules. Others (maybe even most) are more about your own strengths and weaknesses. If you’re bad at coming up with names, create a list of names in advance. If you have a mental list of monsters you want to include, write them down so you can roll or check the list when you need something for the characters to fight. During the playtests for Guardians of Aetheria, I noticed that my weakness is coming up with interesting ancient sci-tech city ruins. Every place the characters went ended up being either a stock D&D style dungeon or a boring modern building pretending not to be. Before I run the game again, I need to watch some sci-fantasy cartoons, look at a shitload of Luis Royo art, and maybe read some Dying Earth books to come up with some hooks and set pieces to give my ruined cities the proper feel.

Unless I think of something I missed, that concludes the walk-through. I’d originally planned to have the Guardians of Aetheria Elevator Pitch ready to post along with the final installment of this series. Unfortunately, I made the mistake of doing it in the middle of con season, so I haven’t had a chance to write the Elevator Pitch in between posts like I originally planned. When I get it finished up, I’ll post it with the others and provide a link here. Next week, something new.

As I mentioned last time, it recently kind of hit us that next year will be the 20th Anniversary of QAGs. The first edition of the game was printed in 1998 (Second Edition wasn’t released until 2003). Some of you may be too young to remember 1998. Others are old farts like us who still think of the 90s as something far more recent than it actually is. In either case, you may not fully appreciate exactly how much the world has changed since 1998. For this week’s blog, I’m going to provide some interesting facts about 1998 that may be useful if you decide to run a game set in that magical, far-away time (or if you just want to make fun of how old we are).

A pound of bacon cost $2.53.

The U.S. launched missile strikes against Al-Quida training camps in Afghanistan. We have always been at war with Eastasia.

The first Mark Twain Prize for American Humor was awarded to Richard Pryor.

Season 2 of South Park premiered.

Bill Clinton denied having sexual relations with that woman.

Hillary Clinton’s first used the term “vast right-wing conspiracy.” It was kind of the 90’s version of “What Happened.”

California banned smoking in bars and restaurants.

An autopsy revealed that Chris Farley had died of a drug overdose. The same experts would later confirm that water is wet.

Viagra was approved by the FDA.

Amazon.com just sold books. Made out of paper.

The Euro became a thing.

Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa both broke Roger Maris’s home run record. Steroids may have been involved.

Oprah Winfrey was found not guilty of defaming beef.

The 5,000th episode of The Price is Right aired. Bob Barker was still the host.

Getting on the internet required tying up your phone line. It was a land line, and there’s a good chance you logged on through AOL.

Ginger left The Spice Girls.

El Nino was a big deal.

Titanic won all the Oscars.

Tony Blair became Prime Minister of the UK.

ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) formed.

The Little Mermaid statue was decapitated by vandals for the first time since 1964.

Beyonce was still in Destiny’s Child.

Bruce Willis died saving the world from an asteroid.

Israel turned 50.

Michael Jordan retired from the NBA (for a little while).

Phil Hartman was murdered by his wife, who then killed herself.

Windows 98 was released. It immediately crashed.

The Department of Justice filed an antitrust suit against Microsoft, probably because of Windows 98.

Google was founded. If you wanted to find out what the hell a “Google” was, you had to Ask Jeeves.

Buffy killed Angel.

Elton John was knighted.

Congress passed a “Mickey Mouse Law” that extended copyright by 20 more years. They named it after Sonny Bono, who died that year in a skiing accident.

John Glenn became the oldest old fart to ever go to space.

Jesse “The Body” Ventura became the governor of Minnesota.

Jaden Smith was born. Frank Sinatra died. This was not a fair trade-off.

Before we get into the next section of Guardians of Aetheria campaign design, I realized that I’ve been missing an important game-specific trait. Since characters become Guardians as recognition for an act of great heroism, it would probably be nice to know what the characters did to get noticed by the Guardians. So I’m going to be adding a “Heroic Deed” trait to Character Concept. At first I thought about putting it somewhere on the story infor side of the character sheet but (1) it’s kind of a sub-trait of Backstory and (2) I can think of a lot of cases where it makes sense for a character to get a Concept Bump based on the heroic act that got him an invitation to the order (especially if the deed involved a still-active villain or faction).

Speaking of villains and factions, we’ve built up a nice little diorama of Aetheria so far, but we need one more ingredient to make it a place where the characters can have adventures: conflict. While adventures are packed with their own conflicts (Man vs. Nature, Man vs. Self, Man vs. Spiked Pit Trap, or whatever), they also tend to happen when more long-running conflicts come to a head. Right now, we’re mostly concerned with that second group. It’s time to look at the things we’ve already created and figure out where the tensions are and how these tensions might manifest themselves in ways that the characters could get mixed up in. We’re not so much looking for specific quests or missions as situations that could lead to quests and missions.

The Big Conflict

Most stories (and RPGs) have one big conflict, usually built into the premise of the game, that generates many of the the smaller conflicts that the characters face: the threat posed by a villainous spy organization, survival in a world overrun by zombies, or the eternal battle between monsters who want to peacefully coexist in a dungeon and lunatics who want to kill them and take their stuff. Sometimes this big conflict is something that can be defeated (the enemy spy organization can be crushed), sometimes it’s eternal (those monsters aren’t going to kill themselves and loot their own bodies), and sometimes it’s somewhere in between (humanity might eventually beat back the zombie threat, but it could take generations).

In Guardians of Aetheria, the big conflict is basically the Guardians’ mission statement: there are threats to Aetheria, and it’s up the Guardians to defeat them. This is an eternal conflict (there will always be threats), but over the course of the campaign it the conflict will manifest as a specific threat (Bloodgrave the Demon King) that can and must be defeated; if Bloodgrave wins, there won’t be an Aetheria left to protect. Early in the game, the threat of Bloodgrave will be mostly theoretical, with the heroes dealing with more run-of-the-mill threats like marauding monsters or Skeletor-like villains orchestrating their schemes-of-the-week. By the end of the first season, though, it should be clear that Bloodgrave is finally moving against the rest of the world. Depending on how quickly things escalate from there, this could lead into a period of intelligence and resource gathering with minor skirmishes in the Scarred Lands or directly into an all-out war between Good and Evil. By default, the end of the war is also the end of the campaign, but if players want to keep going the game could shift to rebuilding or (if Bloodgrave wins) freeing Aetheria from enemy control.

Character-driven Conflicts

Hopefully at least some of your characters have built-in story hooks, so make sure to take a look at the PCs, talk to the players, and look for conflicts that the player have set up for their characters, then work out what you need to make those conflicts play out in the game. Looking at our Sample of Play Theater characters, we can find a few character-driven conflicts:

Shalamar the Sorceress has the most blatant plot hook of all the characters in her Backstory. Her master and a bunch of other wizards were captured by demonlings and she’s made it her mission to find them. The search Whatshisname the Wizard might make a good B-plot for the first season of the campaign, and could even be used to build up to the reveal that Bloodgrave has decided it’s time for world domination. Maybe he’s enslaved them to work on a super weapon or he’s draining their magical energy to increase his own occult power or something.

Tel Tylwyg, the Snuk explorer/inventor, also has a potential Backstory conflict, since he was abandoned by his tribe. Since this one doesn’t have a clearly actionable plot hook, the GM will need to talk to the player to determine if there’s something here that can play out in the game or if it’s just a story the GM should create an opportunity for the character to tell.

Sir Uriel Lightblade, the heroic knight, also has a mission: to find the legendary Sword of Acala, the First Light Blade. This is a big quest and should probably take most of the campaign (so he can find it just in time to use it in the battle against Bloodgrave) but it can create conflict since there are almost certainly other people looking for the sword and sometimes Uriel will have to choose between following down a new lead on the sword and fulfilling his other duties. He’s also got a couple less obvious conflict-generating traits. First, he’s a noble, which could come with all kinds of obligations and expectations that can make his life more interesting. Second, he’s a member of a Knightly Order, which could get him mixed up in internal politics, rivalries with other orders, tournaments, and situations where his membership in the order conflicts with his status as a Guardian.

Glob Lobber is just a big mutant lizard man that throws slime at people. His Backstory is that he was captured by demonlings and rescued by Uriel, but it’s really more a source of motivation (in the form of loyalty to Uriel and/or a mean-on for demonlings) than a potential subplot. That’s ok. Some players are happy to play supporting characters, others find their character sub-plots as play progresses.

Background Conflicts

Background conflicts are things that are happening in the setting regardless of whether or not the characters get involved with them: political maneuverings, trade wars, natural disasters, fads, or whatever. Since you’ve already got a bunch of stuff you need to define in more detail before the game starts, the best way to find background conflicts is to think about how the different groups relate to each other and how they fit into the world. Come up with a little detail about the group’s activities and goals, then figure out how that group’s actions help or hinder other groups and you’re bound to find some tensions. Once you find the conflicts, look for ways that the characters might become involved in or aware of the conflicts.

Conflicts of the Week

I said earlier that we weren’t really talking about adventures right now, but Conflicts of the Week are kind of close. They’re basically generic adventure structure that just requires the GM to plug in the details. They’re great for early in the game when the bigger plotlines haven’t been introduced and everyone’s still getting a feel for the setting and the characters, but they can also provide a break from the main plot or filler when the GM needs to figure out what happens next in the ongoing storyline. Some sample Conflicts of the Week for Guardians of Aetheria include:

One of the never-ending natural disasters in the Scarred Lands uncovers a new ruin; the PCs are sent to explore it.

A monster or band of marauders attacks travellers or people living on the edge of the scarred lands

A recurring villain hatches his latest scheme to defeat the Guardians of Aetheria once and for all! [insert evil laugh]

Somebody finds a powerful piece of technology or magic in the ruins and makes very poor choices about how to use it

Different factions vie for control of an artifact/technological wonder/contrivium deposit

As you sort out your conflicts, resist the urge to play them out. Unless the conflict is so far in the background that the characters have no chance of getting involved, resolving the conflicts is the PCs’ job, not the GM’s. The GM should only decide how a conflict works itself out if the players choose to ignore it. When you do, remember that ignoring a conflict doesn’t make the characters immune to the fallout. If the PCs decide that going to the ball is more important than preventing Necro-Man from raising an army of undead, the ball is going to get attacked by zombies. Any other outcome would be a betrayal of narrative trust.

I didn’t post last week because I spent the early part of the week getting ready for Archon and Thursday night loading up the booth and driving to St. Louis. What was I working on for Archon? Mostly boring stuff: reprinting missing character sheets from the games I’d already run at other cons, counting and packing product, updating our product list in Square, making sure we had change for the booth, that kind of thing. What can I say? The life of a small press game designer is as glamorous as it is lucrative. But at least I got to make up some characters for some new games.

When I was preparing my game list for Archon, I noticed that each 4-hour game slot was now broken down into two 2-hour sessions. I realized these were mostly meant for board and card games, but the Archon gaming staff seems to like us, so I decided to see if they’d let me get away with a couple of 2-hour demo sessions for Cinemechanix. This would allow more people to get a look at how the game works and since most of my con games last about 3 hours anyway, I figured I could do it in 2 if I kept things simple enough.

The first step in guaranteeing simplicity was to use pre-generated characters. This isn’t a huge difference from most of the CInemechanix games I’ve run at cons. Team Alpha Force 37 is based on a very specific kind of terrible comic, so pre-gens guarantee that the characters are the right kind of dumb. Wet Hot American Monsters is a very sandboxy game with no clear mission, so you need characters who fit obvious archetypes so the players can pick them up and start doing things without a lot of prompting. Qerth characters are just a pain in the ass to make. The only game I’ve been using player-created characters so far is Guardians of Aetheria, mostly to see what kinds of things players come up with.

To make it even easier to jump into the game (and because it fits the Hollywood theme), I decided to use characters from pop culture. The idea was that using recognizable characters would make it even easier for players to get moving. I came up with a few options and posted a poll on the Cinemechanix playtest group with some possible games. While I wanted to have 5 or 6 options for the demo game players to choose from, I only had time to put 3 sets of characters together (the top 2 from the poll and one I just wanted to do): Muppets, League of Awesome Dudes, and Space Cowboys.

The first demo group chose to play The Muppets. Since it was the Muppets, I decided to cut Backstory and Fatal Flaw from the character sheet. I also decided that since Muppets are entertainers who often do their own versions of pop culture stories (though not as often as they did when they were Muppet Babies), they needed a “Part” Concept Trait that changed with the show they were doing. They also each got at least 1 unallocated Trademark that they could use for a performance-related ability. So if you’re doing Muppets Noir, Fozzie might have the Part of “Private Detective” and use his unallocated Trademark for “Find Clues.” The players got to choose what story the Muppets were telling (I tried suggesting Piggy the Vampire Slayer, but they didn’t bite) and ended up going with Game of Thrones.

Game of Thrones was a show I specifically left off the list because it’s not very well suited for a one-shot RPG. While some of the problems I anticipated did come up, the fact that it was Muppets made them easier to live with. We had kind of a strange group: King Robert (Kermit), Circe* (Miss Piggy), Jaimie (Dr. Teeth), Ned Stark (Fozzie), Sir* Bronn (Gonzo), Hodor (Animal), Thoros (Floyd Pepper, I think, but it might have been Zoot), and an unnamed Maester (Janice). Since I could only think of one place where most of those characters would plausibly be together, the game started with Bran Stark falling from the tower at Winterfell (we skipped the un-Muppetlike behaviour between Piggy and Dr. Teeth beforehand). After some antics, Kermit asked Fozzie to be his Hand and started moving right along towards King’s Landing.

When they arrived, they found the city locked down and the Throne usurped by Tyrion (special guest star Peter Dinklage). While Gonzo tried (and failed) to bypass the walls as a weirdo cannonball, Kermit just talked his way through and the crew headed straight for The Green Keep, where they convinced The Mountain (Sweetums) to let them in. One musical production and a pie fight later, Kermit had regained the Iron Throne and Tyrion was catapulted into geosynchronous orbit (he would periodically reappear, still flying through the air).

We still had an hour to go, so the king got a raven begging for help at The Wall, because zombies. They got there and met John Snow (I don’t think we specified whether he was a Muppet or Kit Harrington), who had shot up to the season 7 timeline** in a couple of days and was now partnered up with his aunt/lover Denise (who is apparently Kermit’s new girlfriend; a player suggested it) and her dragons. During the zombie battle, these two took off on the dragons and usurped the Iron Throne before the PCs returned. Fortunately, Kermit regained it easily (since we previously established that rulership belonged to whoever sat on the the Iron Throne. It was kind of like musical chairs). Later there was a circus, a murder plot, a hunt for wild pies, and several successful attempts to take the throne from Kermit (Westeros was briefly ruled by King Hostess Apple Pie Guy). With the help of his mostly-loyal band of Muppets, King Kermit managed to unseat all usurpers and they all lived incestuously ever after.

*I refused to use Martin’s dumb spellings for normal words. I’ll give him “Maester” since it’s at least pronounced differently, but that’s it.

In days of yore, Hex used to run a game at cons called “The League of Kick-Ass Dudes,” which was basically League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, but with 80s action TV stars: Your Duke boys, your Angels of the Charlie’s variety, your A-Teamers, your McGuyvers, your BJs and/or Bears, you get the idea. At some point we realized that “Awesome” was more 80s-sounding than “Kick-Ass,” so that’s what I listed it as on the poll, where it was the top pick of playtesters.

In the comments, someone (Aces & Apes and And One For All artist Robert Kemp) suggested Jack Burton as a PC, which caused the game to turn into something that probably should have stuck with the original title. I liked the idea of using movie characters, if only because it was different, and Jack Burton kind of set the tone. Instead of going with Rambo or Riggs or John McClane, I decided to use characters who’d lived weirder lives, like Nada from They Live and Sarah Conner (and if you’re trying to figure out how the They that Lived and Skynet fit together, you’ve already missed the point). I also strayed a bit from the 90s, mostly into the Rodriguez/Tarantino mythology. Since most of those characters would fit perfectly into an 80s movie, I was confident they wouldn’t be to jarring.

The PC group for this one consisted of Jack Burton, Sarah Connor, Eddie Hawkins (aka Hudson Hawk), Machete, and Ash Williams (Cherry Darling, Nada, and Seth Gecko weren’t chosen). They were recruited by Zed from the MIB, who explained that stage and screen star Christopher Walken had begun operations throughout the world with the apparent goal of resurrecting the classic Universal Monsters for reasons that were unclear but obviously insane.

The PCs set a course for Bavaria, where Walken had recently bought a castle. While Hudson Hawk & Jack Burton climbed up into the tower to snoop around in the study, Machete convinced the butler that he and the others were there to install some panelling so they could do their own snooping. Even though Zed had told them exactly what Walken was up to, the PCs spent quite a while figuring out that the cell with heavy chains behind the Scooby Doo secret door, books on local genealogy, and calendars with moon phases marked might have something to do with werewolves. This led them to the guy whose family formerly owned the castle, who now lived in a van down by the river. He explained that whenever there was a full moon, Walken would come to town and chase him through the woods. When they asked why, the down-and-out noble admitted that he was a werewolf. Luckily there was a full moon coming up, so the team locked up the werewolf and confronted Walken in a battle that could best be described as “brief and uneventful.” Then they hauled him back to MIB HQ, where Zed shot Walken with a big-ass gun that sent him into the Phantom Zone.

This one didn’t get chosen at Archon, but it was the first set of characters I made and my first attempt at doing character-specific special effects. I really liked how those turned out. This one isn’t based on anything specific (or so I am informed by the Hex lawyers). The basic idea is a Western set in outer space. I think it would make a great TV show, but it would probably get shown out of order and cancelled after 13 episodes.

While we at Archon, somebody realized that next year is the 20th anniversary of QAGS, so we started making plans to celebrate next year. I’ll talk more about that later. Probably more than you want me to.

A few of the Cinemechanix core rules require the group to make decisions about how they apply to the game at hand. Determining the starting Hero Factor (see last week’s blog) is one example of this. Another is deciding whether a character who reaches “Broken” status ends up dead, forced into retirement by his injuries, or is just out of action for a while. For some games, those core rules choices and the tweaks and refinements to character creation are really all you need.

For other games, you’ll need to create special rules for character actions that require more depth or detail than the basic rules provide (a Fast & Furious game probably needs crunchier car chase rules), genre trappings that can’t be summed up with just a Hero Prop Boost (power armor needs more detail in most games), and maybe some weird stuff (supernatural powers, magic, etc). The key when adapting the rules is to make sure that any new rules you design add something to the game and that the added depth is worth the increased rules overhead. If this sounds like a lot of work, don’t worry. There’s a whole section of the Cinemechanix rulebook that walks you through the process. You can see the current draft for the low, low price of joining the playtest group.

For Guardians of Aetheria, we’re going to start with the core rules decisions we need to make. We already figured out starting Hero Factor in the last post, so there are just a few more things to consider:

Broken characters: The Saturday Morning Cartoon rules say characters can’t die, but the epic high fantasy rules disagree, so this is an unusual case where the meaning of “Broken” will change from season to season. During Season 1, Broken characters are out of action for the remainder of the adventure and fine when next week’s episode begins. As the tone darkens, the consequences of being Broken will get more severe. Characters are out of the action longer and may suffer traumatic physical or psychological damage (and accompanying Drops) from their brushes with death. Once the war truly begins, Broken means “dead.”

Leveling Up: In all likelihood, the “another day at the office” rules for leveling up (which allow for gradual changes to character abilities) will work best for this game, but the GM reserves the right to use other leveling up schemes if the season calls for it.

Acclaim: There are no special Acclaim rules during the normal session, but during the first season players have the option of doing a Special Message skit at the end of each episode to earn extra Acclaim (awarded by the GM). This can be an important lesson, a fun rainy-day activity, or whatever else the players can think of, as long as it can be done in under 2 minutes. Bonus points are awarded for tying the skit into this week’s episode. Alternately, the players can come up with the commercial for a new action figure or playset that was introduced in this week’s episode.

We also have a few genre trappings that require special rules, but most of them don’t require anything too elaborate or very much pre-definition:

Magic: We’ve already decided that most spells simply allow characters to use their magic-based character traits in place of some other trait, as long as the thing they want to do can be achieved using one of their spells. Some spells may require their own rules for determining specific DNs or Effect interpretations. For others, details of what is and is not allowable may need to be agreed upon. Most of these things can be defined as they become relevant.

Technology: Technological devices run on Contrivium, so we’ll need to define how many Contrivium stones a device uses and how long they operate before the Contrivium runs out. To keep things simple, this will be measured in episodes. A device only loses power if the character actually uses it during an episode (but loses power even if it’s just used once). The GM will need to decide the Contrivium requirements of any devices the PCs carry and may want to work out some general guidelines for common types of devices.

Starting Contrivium: Since Contrivium is a resource the players will have to keep track of, we should decide how much they have at character creation. Players start with a number of Contrivium Stones equal to Hero Factor.

Light Swords: The game mechanics for a Light Sword were defined during character creation (Sir Uriel carries one), so the big question is whether it’s technological or mystical in nature. I’m going to go with mystical, because it seems right. The Light Sword is powered by the life force of the swordsman, which is why only those who have been properly trained can make it work. They’re basically lightsabers, so no need to re-invent the wheel here.

Character Templates: As we mentioned last week, we’ll need to put together a character template for Snuks (since one of the PCs is a Snuk). The Knights of the Phoenix (Sir Uriel’s Order) might also get a template, though it doesn’t necessarily require one. The GM may also want to go ahead and create templates for other common races or character types, but unless a member of that group is going to be a major character, a basic understanding of the character type might be all you need. You can always come up with the details later if they become relevant. It’s really a matter of GM preference.

We’ll probably run into other things we’ll need rules for as the game plays out, but a lot of them will be things the GM will realize she has to come up with when she designs the adventure. For the things that crop up during play, come up with the simplest rule that works for the situation at hand and work out more robust rules after the session if it seems like the kind of thing that will come up again in the future. As long as the story explanation of how things work stays consistent and on-the-fly version of the rules didn’t result in some campaign-changing outcome, a previous scene that doesn’t quite fit rules designed after the fact can usually be explained away by pretending the characters rolled differently than they actually did. Random factors are handy for that kind of thing.